Oops, in 2020 US still has 500 tons of deadly sarin gas stockpiles which it hopes to remove by 12/31/2023. Jan. 2020 is first time in a decade US has destroyed any of its stockpile of nerve agents. Why isn’t US kicked out of OPCW?

The plant will destroy munitions containing sarin through a two-step processcalled neutralization followed by a method called supercritical water oxidation. Automated equipment takes the munitions apart and drains the chemical agent. The agent is mixed with water and caustic to produce hydrolysate.

The hydrolysate is then pumped from tanks to reactors where it is subjected to high temperature and pressure. The resulting products are water, carbon dioxide and a salt solution. Remaining metal parts from the munitions are thermally heated to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and can be safely recycled, according to a news release.

“Our highly skilled team is dedicated to the task of safely destroying the chemical munitions,” said Ron Hink, a Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass project manager. “We’ve trained extensively for this stage of the project and we’re confident we can safely complete the mission.”

“The credibility of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is on the line after a series of devastating leaks from whistleblowers has shown that the UN [backed] body distorted an alleged CW [chemical weapons] incident in Syria in 2018.The distortion by the OPCW of the incident suggests that senior directors at the organization were pressured into doing so by Western [US] governments.

This has grave implications because the United States,Britain and France launched over 100 air strikes against Syria following the CW incident [in Douma] near Damascus in April 2018. The Western [Trump] powers rushed to blame the Syrian government forces, alleging the use of banned weapons against civilians. This was in spite of objections by Russia at the time and in spite of evidence from independent investigators that the CW incident was a provocation staged by [Islamic terrorist]anti-government militants.

However, the whistleblower site Wikileaks hasreleased more internal communications provided by 20 OPCW experts who protest that senior officials at the organization’s headquarters in The Hague engaged in “doctoring” their field reports from Syria.

Copies of the doctored OPCW reports are seen to have suppressed important evidencecasting doubt on the official [Trump] Western narrative claiming that the Syrian government was to blame. That indicates the OPCW was engaged in a cover-up to retrospectively “justify” the air strikes [bombings] by [Trump] Western powers.This is a colossal scandal which implies the US, Britain and France wrongly attacked Syria and are therefore guilty of aggression.Yet, despite the gravity of the scandal, Western media have, by and large, ignored it. Indicating that these media are subordinated by their governments’ agenda on Syria, rather than exposing the truth as independent journalistic services.

An honorable exception is Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson who has given prominence to the scandal on US national TV. So too has veteran British journalist Peter Hitchens who has helped expose the debacle in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Apart from those sources, the mainstream Western media have looked away. This is an astounding dereliction of journalistic duty to serve the public interest and to hold governments to account for abusing power.

That illustrates how Western news media are not “independent” as they pompously claim but rather serve as propaganda channels to facilitate their governments’ agenda.

An enlighteningcase study was published by Tareq Haddad who quit from Newsweek recently because the editors censored his reports on the unfolding OPCW scandal. Haddad explained that he had important details to further expose the OPCW cover-up, but despite careful deliberation on the story he was inexplicably knocked back by senior editors at Newsweek who told him to drop it.There is more than a hint in Haddad’s insider-telling that senior staff at the publication are working as assets for Western intelligence agencies, and thus able to spike stories that make trouble for their governments.

The organizationhas become a tool for [US] Western powers. Russian envoy to the OPCW and ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin says that Moscow categorically objects to expanding the OPCW’s functions and its powers of attributing blame [which is often impossible].The extension of powers is being recommended by [Trump] the US, Britain and France – the three countries implicated in abusing the OPCW in Syria to justify air strikes against that country.

The Russian envoy added: “The OPCW’s attribution mechanism is a mandate imposed by the [Trump] US and its allies, which has nothing to do with international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention’s provisions. Any steps in this direction are nothing more than meddling in the UN Security Council’s exclusive domain. We cannot accept this flagrant violation of international law.”